Hyper-V replication licensing

[StorageNinja]

@scottalanmiller

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@DustinB3403 said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

If the original backup host fails in 90 days, the client is then on the hook to Microsoft. It's far cheaper to purchase a second standard license then to worry about it.

Not in 99.999% of cases. Remember you are talking about a double failure, not a single failure. So let's run the numbers assuming a single license is $700.

For 90 Day Failover Window Licensing Cost: $700
For Sub 90 Day Double Failover Licensing Cost: $1400

The drug you are looking for is failing over to reduce maintenance window times for host/hypervisor patching every patch Tuesday (assuming Hyper-V).

[scottalanmiller]

@John-Nicholson said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

I just showed up to say you are all wrong

They should buy Software Assurance which will let them migrate that license back and forth whenever they want at a lower cost than buying a full stand alone license.

Yup, way better than a second license. But easily still not worth it based on this risk alone. Even if the business was making a million an hour (which would make them a Fortune 100) it's only worth a few hundred bucks to mitigate this risk alone. SA might be worth it for lots of other reasons, I'm an SA fan generally, it would have to be really cheap to make sense here just from the ability to fall back really quickly. But with the other benefits, is easily the way to go.

[scottalanmiller]

@John-Nicholson said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@scottalanmiller

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@DustinB3403 said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

If the original backup host fails in 90 days, the client is then on the hook to Microsoft. It's far cheaper to purchase a second standard license then to worry about it.

Not in 99.999% of cases. Remember you are talking about a double failure, not a single failure. So let's run the numbers assuming a single license is $700.

For 90 Day Failover Window Licensing Cost: $700
For Sub 90 Day Double Failover Licensing Cost: $1400

The drug you are looking for is failing over to reduce maintenance window times for host/hypervisor patching every patch Tuesday (assuming Hyper-V).

Yes, very true. If there is a need for scheduled downtime, that would be very different. That would easily justify the cost, but few SMBs are hit by that. More than are hit with the 90 day problem, but still pretty few. Since you need scheduled downtime for the OS anyway that can't be avoided through any means in these scenarios, it's can't be a significant deal.

[Dashrender]

@JaredBusch said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Mike-Davis Hyper-V replication works fine but there is no automated power on or failure detection. That requires you setup a cluster and use SCCM I believe.

I use basic replication at a number of locations and it works great.

If you are using replication for DR, then yes you need the second windows license. Because the potential for migration is always there.

If you are failing over manually. Then you can get away with one server.

But I have to ask, if you are dropping a few grand for the hardware, why would you not spend the extra on the second License and have HA setup?

[Dashrender]

When did that SA benefit get added?

[scottalanmiller]

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

If you are using replication for DR, then yes you need the second windows license. Because the potential for migration is always there.

If you are failing over manually. Then you can get away with one server.

Even replicating for DR, doesn't imply that you set it to start automatically. And even then, it's only migrating BACK that triggers the need for a second license.

[scottalanmiller]

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

But I have to ask, if you are dropping a few grand for the hardware, why would you not spend the extra on the second License and have HA setup?

Because you can have HA without spending that money AND in most SMBs that's still a lot of extra money.

[Dashrender]

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

If you are using replication for DR, then yes you need the second windows license. Because the potential for migration is always there.

If you are failing over manually. Then you can get away with one server.

Even replicating for DR, doesn't imply that you set it to start automatically. And even then, it's only migrating BACK that triggers the need for a second license.

Agreed, it the automatic fail situation that as I understood from the Microsoft green guy at MS. That required the extra license.

[Dashrender]

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

But I have to ask, if you are dropping a few grand for the hardware, why would you not spend the extra on the second License and have HA setup?

Because you can have HA without spending that money AND in most SMBs that's still a lot of extra money.

So what... You setup autofailover, then when you see a failover you then disable that until the 90 days is over?

[scottalanmiller]

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

But I have to ask, if you are dropping a few grand for the hardware, why would you not spend the extra on the second License and have HA setup?

Because you can have HA without spending that money AND in most SMBs that's still a lot of extra money.

So what... You setup autofailover, then when you see a failover you then disable that until the 90 days is over?

Yup, that's one way. If you are doing Hyper-V Replication, though, there isn't any means of failing back as the replication is one way, so nothing more to do.

[Dashrender]

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

But I have to ask, if you are dropping a few grand for the hardware, why would you not spend the extra on the second License and have HA setup?

Because you can have HA without spending that money AND in most SMBs that's still a lot of extra money.

So what... You setup autofailover, then when you see a failover you then disable that until the 90 days is over?

Yup, that's one way. If you are doing Hyper-V Replication, though, there isn't any means of failing back as the replication is one way, so nothing more to do.

Really? So once it's failed, and you repair the other box, wait 90 days, then you have to configure replication back the other way?

[scottalanmiller]

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

But I have to ask, if you are dropping a few grand for the hardware, why would you not spend the extra on the second License and have HA setup?

Because you can have HA without spending that money AND in most SMBs that's still a lot of extra money.

So what... You setup autofailover, then when you see a failover you then disable that until the 90 days is over?

Yup, that's one way. If you are doing Hyper-V Replication, though, there isn't any means of failing back as the replication is one way, so nothing more to do.

Really? So once it's failed, and you repair the other box, wait 90 days, then you have to configure replication back the other way?

Yup. That's how one way replication works And since this lines up with the licensing, keeps you from accidentally violating the license naturally and is the logical way to do this anyway as you wouldn't want to migrate back until there was another failure, it works pretty awesomely.

[BRRABill]

Or just buy a second license and do whatever the hell you want.

Or, like probably like 95% of people do, say "That's a bunch of crap" and just do what you want.

[Mike Davis]

I never expected the thread to blow up while I was away. I meant two servers are needed for the remote office. A domain controller and a file server. Corporate IT insists that the DC and FS be physical. Corporate says only physical servers are allowed because virtual servers are too risky. Since they obviously aren't following best practices, I was trying to make a business case out of virtualization and wondered if we could save $600 on the license of Windows. I was proposing taking their hardware and only buying one Windows license to come out $600 ahead and have a redundant system instead of having production go down if either one of their servers fails.

[Mike Davis]

I agree that in the big picture of their infrastructure $600 isn't much, but this has been an interesting group to work with. I could share a few examples of some of the stuff that they said over the last couple of days, but I don't need to berate anyone, I need to have a talk with the business manager and show them how their IT is making bad business decisions.

[JaredBusch]

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

@Dashrender said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

But I have to ask, if you are dropping a few grand for the hardware, why would you not spend the extra on the second License and have HA setup?

Because you can have HA without spending that money AND in most SMBs that's still a lot of extra money.

So what... You setup autofailover, then when you see a failover you then disable that until the 90 days is over?

Yup, that's one way. If you are doing Hyper-V Replication, though, there isn't any means of failing back as the replication is one way, so nothing more to do.

Really? So once it's failed, and you repair the other box, wait 90 days, then you have to configure replication back the other way?

Yup. That's how one way replication works

Yes, it may be technically how it works.
But no, that is not how it works as a system. The system handles it all for you.

Note that the primary and replica servers are now reversed.

[Mike Davis]

@JaredBusch Thanks for taking the time to go in to detail of how that works. Right now all my larger systems are VMware so I haven't done anything large with Hyper-V. I can see the writing on the wall though and I think my next cluster will be Hyper-V.

[JaredBusch]

For a failed system failover, it works like this.

I manually shut down the live one and know that all my data is replicated so I am not losing anything for this.

In this case you have to manually reverse the replication once the failed host is back up.

[scottalanmiller]

@Mike-Davis said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

I never expected the thread to blow up while I was away. I meant two servers are needed for the remote office. A domain controller and a file server. Corporate IT insists that the DC and FS be physical. Corporate says only physical servers are allowed because virtual servers are too risky. Since they obviously aren't following best practices, I was trying to make a business case out of virtualization and wondered if we could save $600 on the license of Windows. I was proposing taking their hardware and only buying one Windows license to come out $600 ahead and have a redundant system instead of having production go down if either one of their servers fails.

Not only can you save $700, but you can provide failover, too, which is completely missing from their "low risk" scenario. Plus you can snapshot before patching, further protecting them from themselves.

But if they are mandating physical, does risk or cost savings really come into play?

[scottalanmiller]

@Mike-Davis said in Hyper-V replication licensing:

I agree that in the big picture of their infrastructure $600 isn't much, but this has been an interesting group to work with. I could share a few examples of some of the stuff that they said over the last couple of days, but I don't need to berate anyone, I need to have a talk with the business manager and show them how their IT is making bad business decisions.

Where "bad" = "professional negligence."